Friday, 7 December 2012

My first real exposure to space science, apart from what I had been taught in school, was the science show Cosmos: A Personal Voyage written and presented by American astrophysicist Carl Sagan. Doordarshan (Far Sight), India’s national television network, ran the 13-part series in the early 1980s. It was telecast on Sunday mornings and children and teenagers, like me, sat huddled around black-and-white television sets for Sagan’s perspective on the universe and the infinite possibilities that lay within and beyond it.

Around this time an Indian publisher of comics came out with a new comic-book titled The Black Hole in partnership with Disney Comics.

Cosmos and the comic-book along with Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. did more to enhance my knowledge of space and universe, both real and fictional, than all my science textbooks in school.

Ray Bradbury came later, much later, as did other writers of science fiction, a literary genre I wasn't quite familiar with until the early part of this century when I picked up, rather tentatively, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. I liked it a lot and imagined the end in different ways. For instance, the invisible man would not have suffered an ignominious death.

Between then and now, I have read no more than three novels and a handful of short stories by Bradbury which doesn't exactly qualify me for Ray Bradbury Week. I have, however, read more about Bradbury than by Bradbury including interviews and assorted profiles and quotable quotes. He scores high on sound bites.

I decided to review one of the few short stories I had read and selected The Million-Year Picnic (1946) for this occasion. I read it twice but finally decided against writing about an adventurous family’s rocket-propelled picnic to Mars. I need to really understand Bradbury’s fiction and writing before I review any of his work. It takes getting used to.

November 24, 1967

Now I was aware of Bradbury’s connections with NASA, especially the fact that the US space agency, only last August, named a landing site on the red planet as Bradbury Landing. What I didn't know was that, in 1966, the renowned sf writer was sent by LIFE magazine on assignment to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, and, in 1967, he came back and wrote an article An Impatient Gulliver Above Our Roofs that won him the Aviation Space Writers Association's Award and the Robert S. Ball Memorial Award.

The article, accompanied by some brilliant photographs by Ralph Morse, a highly creative photographer for LIFE magazine, is one of the finest pieces of writing I have read this century. There is both a poetic and magical touch to Bradbury’s writing. He starts by talking about how, in 1929, at the age of nine, he was influenced by science fiction…by Buck Rogers, Amazing Stories, Flash Gordon, Sputnik, and watching John Glenn splash down in 1962…and describes Houston, Texas, as “the home you have been waiting for since 1929 when you were truly born,” the year you thought and dreamed of “impossible futures.”

Bradbury was thunder-struck by what he saw inside the Manned Spacecraft Center where he “stood agape amidst giant electric eyes and ears, watching ruby red laser beams flash down black tunnels, whistling centrifuges…” staring up at a single invention, the rocket, which, he said, was redesigning mankind.

His profound and humbling experience prompted Bradbury to declare that man would land on the moon in 1969, which he did, on July 20 of that year, and referred to his prediction of a Mars landing in 1999 in The Martian Chronicles (1950) as an event that America would beat by 20 years—“1980 would be a safe bet!” Bradbury was, obviously, emotionally overwhelmed by the visit to the space programme for he exclaimed: “Great God, I never dreamed this!”

Through over half-a-century of writing, Ray Bradbury has been telling his readers to do just that—dream on a scale as big and grand and infinite as space.

Later, accepting the two awards, Bradbury said, “I am the great-great-great-times-a-thousand nephew of dragfoot. I am the one with the bad eye and the weak arm and not so deft ankle. And I, bastard son of Ab the Caveman or Unha the Blind was sent by LIFE magazine some 17 months ago to watch the runners and jumpers, the bounders and catchers, and the bringers-back from space at Houston, Texas."

Really enjoyed reading about this Prashant - it's so interesting that Bradbury, a very individual author of SF who largely eschewed hard science in his stories, was so involved witht he space programme. Amazing that he lived long enough to see so many of his dreams became reality

Thanks, Sergio. I didn't know about Bradbury's keen interest in the space programme until I read his piece in LIFE. In fact, he also wrote an article called "Why Man Explores" for NASA's educational publications division which I forgot to mention here. I wonder what he had to say when man actually landed on the moon. Will have to look into it.

Yvette, I am glad you enjoyed the post. At NASA, Bradbury must have felt like a kid let loose in a toy store. I agree, he was a terrific writer with a terrific imagination. I am guilty of not reading enough sf too and have read very little of Bradbury's work. I intend to correct his long absence in my literary pursuits next year. Like you I love science fiction and fantasy movies and never tire of watching them again and again. The STAR WARS trilogy has me in awe every time I see the films.

Todd, thanks for the heads-up about Harlan Ellison, unknown to me until now, and her piece in STALKING THE NIGHTMARE, another first as well. I haven't had the time to check out the Bradbury video link but I think it should work here. I will let you know.

Tracy, you are most welcome. You were probably one of the luck few who got to attend a Bradbury lecture, that too, on something as esoteric as mind and supermind. Everything Bradbury has spoken or written is new for me and I am happy that many of his works, especially short stories, are in the public domain.